Working for an Ok, seriously, what are the most underfunded fields in science?
I have to agree with some of the other responses: the single most underfunded field across the board, where significant extra funding could leverage major long term results - is systematics - good old fashioned field biology, doing collection, classification, taxonomy, storing samples and preserving.
I'm hard pressed to think of fields in chemistry and physics where I can unambiguously say there is serious underfunding - not that there aren't a lof of fields which could use more funding, but most would be best served by steady ramp up and stable funding, not sudden new large funding.
In astronomy, the most underfunded field is probably good old fashioned atomic and molecular spectroscopy - there is a lot of need for lab and theoretical work on absorption line strenghts, including excited states of intermediate ionized compounds, exotic species stable or meta-stable only in extreme conditions of disequilibria; and, the dreaded non-local thermodynamic equilibrium
dust could also use some attention.
I mean, we still don't really know what causes the diffuse interstellar infrared absorption bands, even though we kick started an entire new field in the process of speculating (fullerenes were discovered in an attempt to explain DIBs).
Other fields that could probably do with serious cash (apart from mine) are database mining and synoptic surveys, and planet detection.
Ok, so I feel guilty about the original flip answer.
Comments
And in geology?
Posted by: Lab Lemming | November 6, 2006 5:44 AM
don't know, I have some sense of what I think are interesting things to do in geo, but no good grasp of what current funding levels or what the constraints are - like whether manpower or equipment funding are limiting factors
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | November 6, 2006 1:29 PM